Garrett Gilchrist wrote:With British Pathe opening up their vast newsreel archives, my first step was to dig up the 1967 newsreel starring the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. "Nurdling" and "Body Paint" were also part of that newsreel. It turns out Body Paint stars a then-teenaged Caroline Munro, of Starcrash fame.

I remember seeing this in such poor quality multigenerational VHS back in the 90s. We're spoiled these days. Audiences in 1967 were spoiled too - Caroline Munro, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band, and games devised by minor Goon Michael Bentine ... in colour!

This is kinda wonderful. I always wondered what the whole sequence looked like. Nice quality and you're right, we are a bit spoiled these days :).

Yes, I got that one, if I'm not mistaken it wasn't released on the original album but included on one of the remasters as a bonus track.

Q: Do you have any info on about when the "Can Blue Men Sing The Whites" album version was recorded. I know the song was recorded for Top Gear a few times. There are four versions as far as I know, two for Top Gear and two album versions (mono and stereo).

Now the thing is that I recently talked to someone who owns an acetate with said song on one side. He said its an EMI-disc with rubber stamped "Bron Publishing" on the label.
The song on the other side is a non-Bonzo recording but a recording released on LP by Manfred Mann. Now the date is interesting, the album with this song was released in 1966. The first question that popped up was: what has an "old" 1966 song have to do with a "new" song released in late 1968.
The most probable answer is that another act was (or pretended to be) interested in these two songs from Gerry Bron's catalogue and that Bron subsequently ordered an acetate from EMI to clinch the deal or the acetate had another (more interesting) reason. Now the earliest known recording of "Blue Men" is from July 1968 and was made for Top Gear, so the song is pre-Urban Spaceman (or is it true that this song was recorded in March 1968) and without the latter it could be that it was a contender for release on single and that it was made for management of EMI by Bron in his capacity as producer of both bands.
The guy I worked with said he got the acetate from a friend (who also was a fan of Manfred Man) and that he had told him it was a testpressing.

Anyway! That's all I know thus far. Perhaps a recording date sheds some light on this thing.